Books Bygone: Wash DayMarica Bernstein My library contains a lot of old books by Great Thinkers addressing life’s most profound questions. What does it mean to flourish as a human being? How can we believe in a benevolent God in the face of brutish evil? What is the proper relationship of the state to the …
What does history mean to you? Is it alive, or is it dead and buried in the past? Is it a list of dry happenings with drier dates, or is it full of exciting or solemn moments and people doing the things you do, only in a finer, bigger way?”
These simple questions, asked of boys and girls in grades 5-8, begin Eleanore Hubbard’s Citizenship Plays: A Dramatic Reader for Upper Grades (1929). She continues, “If you had been present at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, do you suppose you would ever think of it as an uninteresting document of long words?” Of course not!…
For your reading pleasure (and amusement) I’ve scanned the complete, 5-page article. Though Clarke’s terminology is not what we use, he was quite precient in many respects. One idea that has been discussed at some length is the Orbital Post Office which may make most air mail obsolete in a decade or so. A single …
Books Bygone: ‘Self-made’ means more than everMarica Bernstein Did you know “there are at present time three types of motor vehicles—steam, gasoline, and electrical?” Regarding electrical vehicles: “its sphere of usefulness is confined to city traffic or very short tours out of town” because its battery must be charged after 40 miles. Did you know …
Books Bygone: “Pride of Ownership”Marica Bernstein Shopwork on the Farm by Mack M. Jones (1945) “should be valuable to farmers” concerned about the upkeep of machinery and equipment, but it is a textbook “intended primarily for the use of vocational agriculture students and other farm youth, who will be the farmers of tomorrow, and for …
We’re going to continue with the new format. As always a complete article is only a scan away if you’d like. (And I’ll take greater can than I did with some of these.) Text and images ©1961 American Heritage Publishing Company, New York, New York. “Will the new atmosphere translate itself into a style–perhaps even …
this book is written for you in full appreciation of your problems of running a home. These problems would challenge a psychologist, an expert on child training, an interior decorator, a skilled seamstress, a trained nurse. … Unless you belong to the 10 per cent whose budget is not strictly limited, you are daily faced with the necessity of budgeting the income of one average husband– a problem to stagger a financier.
Filed under, Well, I’ll be damned. I was looking to get something up quickly this morning so I searched my blog for “category: old books,” and “search: coffee.” I was thinking I’d get some hits for posts I’d done there on old coffee table books and do some copy/paste. And indeed, I did get some …
I have only skimmed this but there are echos of C.P. Snow (and others) floating about. The main focus seems to be the shifts–beginning with Bacon–between the big picture and little picture of the world. This of course leads to the inevitable conclusion that “the haphazard scientific technology pursued without regard for its relevance to …
“people are too damned dumb” | Horizon July 1961 Read More »
Embodying the exotic grace of one of the few surviving island paradises of our time, a Balinese dancing girl appears in her ceremonial headdress, or galungan, before the camera of a visiting American, Ewing Krainin.
